Friday, August 1, 2014

At the 1937 National Funeral Director's
Convention, Henney introduced a streamlined flower car as well as a
self-leveling suspension system that they called the Leveldraulic. The
flower car was built on a Packard chassis, featured a collapsible
convertible top, and could be used as a first call car or to transport
altars, chairs and other necessities to the home of the deceased or to
the gravesite.

Most radical automotive designs came from the drafting boards of the
independent auto manufacturers, the ones less beholden to static
corporate ideals and stockholder skepticism. Kaiser, in particular, was
known for its memorable and daring designs. In the late 1940's, Detroit's
Big Three were still pushing to meet post-war demands, so they had
little free time to create new and different cars; they relied on
retooling established sales leaders.
Unencumbered by such
restrictions, Kaiser engineers of the time designed a four-door sedan
with a rear "trunk" door that, when open, and with the rear seat folded
down, transformed the interior into a large cargo area. Thus, it was
innovative Kaiser that gets full credit for an automotive first with its
Traveler and Vagabond hatchback sedans.Our feature Vagabond,
owned by Tucson, Arizona, resident Tom Mulligan, is a first-year 1949
model, which was part of the DeLuxe line of Kaisers featuring upscale
trim; the Traveler was part of the Special lineup. Produced for just two
model years, the Vagabond name was dropped with the introduction of the
redesigned 1951 models; the company opted to keep the more popular
Traveler name in both the Special and DeLuxe series.